The Month of March

Environment: Best coffee shop in SLC

C1x

I built out the entire C1x social feature (C1x Seasons), and also dove back into refining the Deep Stats feature with feedback from a touring professional. I'm at a familiar point in my short app-building career where I find myself with lots of ideas to build, and little conviction as to whether they are worth building.

After a couple test runs of the C1x social feature, I now firmly believe that the entire feature needs to be reworked. I've built a novel idea, but like Throw with the Pros, the execution isn't there. C1x Seasons is the first disc golf competition to exist that does not limit participants by skill level or location. Despite this, it does not currently work in a way which inspires usage - I believe it's too complicated, and leans more into data instead of fun. It was not a bad first try, and does work well in a lot of ways, but despite my efforts this month I think it's time to return to the drawing board.

Deep Stats updates are in progress, and this will remain as a feature only for those disc golfers that are truly data driven. I think the audience for this will only consist of true professionals, but if I can build something that actually helps them, I'll be happy to do it. It helps that AI is improving at the rate that it is - between my two actual jobs and disc golf and chess, it would be hard to commit the time needed to C1x if Claude couldn't write some of the code for me.

C1x will continue to be a work in progress, though I'm hoping for not much longer. I need a bit of a break.

Disc Golf

I had a couple better disc golf showings, but then proceeded to pull what felt like every muscle in my back. I've been slowly recovering from that, and the disc golf game is coming back along with it. It's nearing tournament season again, and my goal this year is to continue building consistency, continue improving at putting, and get my rating back up to where it should be.

My goal, as it always has been, is to be able to compete on the professional tour. I think this is realistic, but will require more time than I am currently committing to improvement. I think an aspect of this will also be more experience in competition, and I've started playing in more local leagues to try and simulate that experience. This month was a bit of a reset with the back issues and travel, but I'm hoping to get the train moving again in April.

Before these setbacks, I did shoot a couple of PRs at local courses in Utah - a hopeful sign that I am continuing to improve.

Project Management

My work with SPARC is still going well, and I've also kicked off two new projects within my construction management role at PROTECS. This has unfortunately meant that I'm generally working 50-60 hour weeks between the two, which does limit the time I have available for other pursuits. I'm not sure what the solution is currently -- it's no secret that my other pursuits are pretty important to me -- but I do worry that I'm committing too much energy in the wrong directions.

My current work with SPARC is more focused on building new programs for future growth, something that is exciting but does come with a lot of grey area to navigate. I ran my first even with them this past month and continued to attend meetings and events -- I've found that the personal engagement is the aspect of this work that I most look forward to.

Not much else to report on this front - work continues to be a focal point for me where I look for ways to improve time usage and management.

Other

Substack and chess lessons are still going strong, but my body has been a bit of a wreck this past month. I was sick, dealt with back issues, and seem to have heavily strained a tendon in my elbow to the point that it's been weeks since the last time I was able to fully extend it. No idea what's going on, but I took it pretty easy for the second half of this month and largely just focused on work. Not something I overly enjoyed doing, but I don't think I had much of a choice.

We did travel a bit this month, including trips to southern Utah, Dinosaur National Monument, and back home to Missouri. Did my first via ferrata hike, wrapped up my rec basketball and volleyball seasons, and did some unique work on Fiverr including analyzing the physics of golf (not disc golf) putters. I kept up my new exercising routines (up until my back issue), and implemented better mobility and meditation habits.

Definitely felt like a two steps forward, one step back type of month, but progress was made regardless. I've said it before, but it is nearing the time where I need to make changes in what I spend my time on.

Onward,

Dylan